H.P.'s TouchPad Tablet Was Bound to Be a Flop, Some Say — The TouchPad tablet from Hewlett-Packard was one of the most closely watched new gadgets of 2011 — and quickly turned out to be the year's biggest flop. The TouchPad, which was supposed to be a rival to Apple's iPad …

Text Messaging Is in Decline in Some Countries — Perhaps to the chagrin of cellphone carriers, all signs point to text messaging's continuing its decline in several parts of the world. — In Finland, there was a significant drop on Christmas Eve, one of the busiest days of the year for texting …

New to Twitter: the tweet Murdoch took down ... fast — “Either @rupertmurdoch is genuinely now on Twitter, or some disgruntled ex-NOTW journo just won the hacking Olympics.” — Less than two days after joining Twitter, media mogul Rupert Murdoch appears to have had his first brush …

The Danger of an Attack on Piracy Online — By invoking the acronym SOPA right at the get-go, I may be daring many of you to check the next column over for something a little less chewy. After all, SOPA, which stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, sounds like a piece of arcane Internet …

Facebook hands out White Hat debit cards to hackers — This is the Visa debit card Facebook is giving to some security researchers for reporting bugs. — A few companies pay money to bug hunters. But Facebook is giving out something more unique than just a check.

Luxury Car-Sharing Service HiGear Shuts Down Due To Theft — San Francisco-based HiGear, a peer-to-peer car-sharing service focused on luxury vehicles, is shutting down due to theft incidents involving its members' cars. According to CEO Ali Moiz, the company will send out an email tomorrow to its members with a full explanation.

The Internet Is People — There's always been a tension on the Internet between humans and algorithms. In the early days, Yahoo was a human-curated index, remember? But humans couldn't keep up, and the algorithms took over. Today, the human factor is rising in importance once again with Facebook …

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